Words matter.
Always use simple direct language.
- Help the poor
- Healthcare for everyone
- Good treatment at work.
Don’t use complex words.
One of many lasting “gifts” of Reagan.
We’ve got to get all those
welfare queens25 year old males playing video games back to work! They’re getting a free ride that they don’t deserve. People only have value when they are working!He started that evil welfare queen idea back in California. It gained traction there so he continued to use it on the national side.
dont you love the misogyny in that “queens” label? because who makes a better scapegoat than black mothers?
Currently? Mexicans and Middle easterners, it would seem. They’re all criminals and rapists apparently.
/s
I’m glad Reagan’s dead
I’m not. I much rather he lived forever. Forever wasting away, seeing his loved ones perish, losing his sanity little by ever so fucking little, inhabiting a hell all of his own.
Regan
loved ones
I don’t think it’s healthy to dehumanize our villains. He probably had loved ones. You don’t need to be a monster to do monstrous things. All humans have that capability within, you and me included.
It’s like that famous answer to “what stops you from murdering and raping?” “Nothing, I rape and murder as much as I want, which is zero."
I agree. We shouldn’t demonize our opponents.
Humans can be monsters, but there are different kinds of monsters too. One special group is the psychopaths.
I believe Regan was one, and I think he saw relationships as transactional.
OK, maybe he wasn’t, let’s assume. But he gladly saw to massive swathes of destruction of American people because he did not see them as humans. If someone can be that callous with human lives, I can think and call him a monster. Because, how can you tell the difference?
Wym? Just a few more decades, and the trickling down will surely start. I can already taste it on their boots
Propaganda works
I’ve always said that if you really wanted communism or socialism to take off in the states you’re gonna have to call it something else
I also don’t use cis because the machine has already made that a thing people don’t want to be called
I don’t mind being called a cis male, but I’m secure in my sexuality and manhood. Conservatives not so much.
This one gets it. The key takeaway should be that humans are very fallible and propaganda works alarmingly well.
We shouldn’t be trusted with our own care.
Fucking lazy ass aliens taking their sweet time… Just invade and incorporate us into your galactic empire already!
Yeah, straight/heterosexual people didn’t want to be called that, either. They want being cis and heterosexual to just be “normal” and any variation to be abnormal. Fuck that, they’ll do the same thing to whatever euphemism you pick instead.
It might have something to do with the word ‘cis’ being used as a slur and a form of othering early on
What’s wrong with the Commonwealth of Independent States?
Hello fellow old person.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
I heard a working theory that we have too many humans on the planet. Some of them were supposed to be reincarnated as ferrets or insects but came back as humans instead. These are the people who are now in charge.
As someone that works with the general public.
People are fucking dumb. Like not I’m not even kidding, there’s a skill gap to even get to a site like this…and not everyone has the ability to do it…I’m not even kidding. People are just stupid.
because welfare has been propagandized as used by “lazy and homeless, and poors, and blacks” its usually based on racism as well, the true welfare queens are Conservative voters.
Oh the TRUE welfare queens are billionaires, corporations get more assistance than people
Ah, ~40% of Americans are complete fucking morons, that sounds about right.
~40% of Americans also read and write at an elementary school level or worse, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
… I think we’ve found the mythical ‘independent, median voter’.
Ah, ~40% of Americans are complete fucking morons, that sounds about right.
You’re leaving out the 29% who are against it no matter what you call it.
Those are evil people, who do not want to help other people. But this 40% are the people who would do the correct thing but they are convinced it’s bad and vote against their interest
thevoidzero basically captured my response, but yeah.
A total fucking moron is a person who is literally too stupid to understand anything going on around them at anything but the most basic level of abstraction.
They have no ability for critical analysis, very little independent thought going on beyond what immediately and directly affects them, personally.
That isn’t to say they can’t learn. Its just that they can’t really ‘think’.
‘The mark of an educated man is the ability to honestly entertain a thought they do not believe in.’
They can’t do that, that would be very difficult snd confusing for them, cause them immense discomfort.
Functionally too stupid to be responsible members of a modern democracy, easily tricked by propoganda… essentially amoral, because they cannot formulate nor adhere to any kind of consistent, intentional moral framework.
…
The 29% below… well, they may or may not be relatively stupid, but they at least have a consistent belief, albeit an evil one… this shows they have an above elementary capability for abstraction and consistentcy.
Which unfortunately also means that only about 30% of people are, at worst, well intentioned, but could also possibly be stupid, though not as stupid as our glorious 40% in the middle that is easily swayed by rhetoric, phrasing, emotional manipulation, “vibes”, etc.
Those are seniors on social security and medicare
54% of Americans read at below a grade 6 level.
Welfare is may litterally just mean ‘moocher’ to an American who has been drowned in propaganda their whole life.
I read about that and i’m not sure what to make of it. My nephew is in second grade soon, and he can read pretty well. He doesn’t like it, because it’s still hard for him. But i’m sure in 2 or 3 years he can read well enough to become president of the united states and not be a nazi. So i’m not sure if the reading level is the problem.
Yep. Never use a ten dollar word when a 50 cent one does the job better. The left wing needs to dump it’s highbrow (and cringe celebrity endorsements) and use the language of the common people in simple terms that cannot be demonised (or would sound insane to try).
Also, this is a prime example of how demonising words, especially buzzwords, is the strategy they use to make it lose all rationality with the public… the notion of being “woke” originally a good thing, welfare a good thing, etc…
Doesn’t work, they take the cheap words too. “Fake news” was originally used for right-wing propaganda. The only solution is education so that future generations are more aware of and resistant to dog whistles and doublespeak.
They managed to make DEI a divisive word, I presume because they always used the abbreviation, because how else can you poison these words.
Sadly, more than 50% of Americans a grade school vocabulary. Imagine trying to convince a kid in grade 6 that helping the poor is not bad.
Ngl but most of the kids have no problems with helping other people.
Anyone can be poor, but only they are on welfare.
Publishers note: They usually refers to African Americans, but can be used for any suspicious minorities.
its almost always used as negative connation against blacks, or unsavory demographics. while the people, white conservatives railing on these people are the biggest welfare queens.
don’t forget wall street and corporations. if you fuck up, congratulations now you’re homeless. if they fuck up, congratulations you’re gonna bail them out.
The timeline is this. The 1950s boomed and created the middle class. Why? FDR decided subsidizing the American people, instead of the robber Baron class, was the way. This subsidy approach to the working class had never happened before in American history.
A middle class cannot happen organically in a capitalist society. It requires government subsidy.
The 50s were built on the backs of women, forcibly ejecting them from workplaces to be housewives, and excluded people who were not white. But the American middle class was born due to these subsidies.
And so it went.
Then, in the 80s. The concept of the evil welfare queen was touted on the national level, and our government decided subsidizing corporate instead of a middle class was the way.
This doesn’t happen overnight, but they begin chipping away at subsidies for Middle Class America and flip those subsidies to corporate America. The belief is, or at least the sales pitch is, subsidizing corporate America is more fiscally efficient than subsidizing the middle class and will ultimately benefit everyone to create a booming, thriving nation.
And so it goes for 40 yrs. Both parties, in tandem.
The chipping away to go back to the subsidizing of a middle class started in the oddest of places. 2020. After the massive destruction of the middle class, and abject proof of how disastrous to the working class subsidizing corporate America is, absolutely squeezing everyone making less than $300k/yr, by the numbers, it was that old man’s admin that tried to shift back on the disaster. Infrastructure, junk fees, internet as an essential utility, student loan forgiveness, etc
The breadth of the problem cannot be fixed in 4 yrs. Or even 8 yrs. Consider how long it took from the 80s to truly feel the oppressive shift of the subsidy change. (I’m old. I mark ~2012-2014 when things started to feel squeezed.)
Also note that you can’t mention Reagan or trickle down economics in this or you lose people.
Could FDR have done what he did without what Theodire Roosevelt did? Teddy has his faults but I feel he built the groundwork that FDR could build on. Granted it had diminished between them, but he faught for the inheritance tax and income tax to become a thing rather than just Tariffs. Tariffs were what were used at the time and created the “Robber Barons” that the Heritage foundation is trying to re-establish.
This is not my area. I’ve simply consumed a lot of Heather Cox Richardson. She’s a Harvard educated American History professor. Posts on YT. Not very popular last check.
It’s calm, historical perspective which I rather enjoy.
I’ll have to try to remember that, I’ll bookmark her. Been trying to listen to ebooks and such when I lay down to sleep now, it actually has been helping me fall asleep much easier. Hardest part is remembering where you left off if you care about the books. I’ll have to find one of those don’t stop playing after the screen is off and see if I can listen to her as well. (Instead of laying there for an hour feeling like I’m not tired and fidgetting I just listen and I’m usually asleep in 30 minutes now). <Vast improvement
Smart audiobook reader has a sleep timer so does YouTube revanced
Thanks I’ll have to look into the audiobook one! Was trying to dodge YouTube, but I couldn’t get any of those videos mentioned above to play in Tubular. I hadn’t tried that app in a while, so maybe it’s just the app and I’ll find another
People are emotional creatures.
Someone was joking in another thread, but maybe we should seriously consider just taking socialism and calling it, like, americanism.
Yeah if you want to pitch socialism to people who don’t know what it is, just describe its parts as individual policies. Don’t actually use the word “socialism” - that makes the rednecks scurred >_>
And if you do say socialism, say it along with something they like that isn’t scurry. For example, “socialism, like the fire department”.
“It’s like crowdsourcing, but with community and business supporting resources!”
Yup, look at the overwhelming support citizens have for the Affordable Care Act… but haaaaaaaaaaaate Obamacare.
american dreamism
“Freedomism”
Don’t use the buzzwords Republicans have spent decades poisoning.
yup, including entitlements, Woke,etc.
Entitlements is a weird one. A person who wrongly believes they are entitled to money/power/respect is “entitled” in a derogatory sense. A person who has paid into the Social Security and Medicare programs for three or four decades is truly, genuinely, entitled to the payout of those programs.
And Republicans believing entitlement programs are bad, when so many of them are dependent on these programs to maintain a basic standard of living, is an astounding level of doublethink.
IIRC “ACA” and “Obamacare” had similar divides. Propaganda is a helluva drug.
One of the main reasons why USAID was the first part of the government targeted was because of things like this.
If you frame their work as “Assistance to disasters” or other variations, plus the context of it being under 1% of the Federal budget, Americans were find with it. If you call it “giving taxpayer money to foreigners” then it’s wildly unpopular.
Which is to say that the lesson is that most people are idiots and have no idea what’s going on in the world. Framing a narrative can get the same individual to simultaneously support and hate literally the same thing. It can get people to support policies and actions that directly harm them.
Which is to say that the lesson is that most people are idiots and have no idea what’s going on in the world.
Not that the information channels that inform them blast high-octane corporate-friendly propaganda since childhood, leaving no attention for any other perspectives?
I wonder what the general opinion of USAID would have been if it had been described as “feeding poor people so their rulers can buy US weapons instead”.
Assistance implies that it is temporary, that it is help to help themselves.
Welfare implies that it is continuous.
If you have to continually support a part of the population then you have a systemic problem. The correct solution would be to change the system. People who support the continuation of the current system either profit from it or don’t see an advantage in a change.
Assistance implies that it is temporary,
Not it does not. Ever heard of “aim assist”? “Assisted living”? “assistive touch” (the iOS feature)? I don’t see how any of these are temporary.
But yeah the correct solution is indeed to change the system. There will always be naysayers who argue that “no one system can suit everybody” so I guess we’ll need a system of systems.
Also, “assistance” is something that is given out of the kindness of your (or the government’s) heart and that the recipient should feel gratitude (and/or have to grovel) for. “Welfare” is seen as something the recipient is entitled to as a right. FWIW I support a UBI that is adequate for food and shelter and the necessities of life - as an entitlement for everybody.
Hey, a UBI supporter! Just curious, how can UBI be implemented in a way that doesn’t result in hyperinflation? If a society was to ration out food/shelter/necessities directly, I understand how that would work. But if it’s done through the intermediary of money, what would prevent the economy from entering an arms race where the producers raise prices to adapt to the new purchasing power of the population, and the government raises the UBI to keep up with the rising prices?
Existing studies show little or no affect on inflation.
https://ubiadvocates.org/universal-basic-income-faq-all-about-ubi/ (#11)
So, “just handing out money” is a way to implement UBI without hyperinflation.
hmm interesting. Will take a look.
A buyers market. Let competition drive down prices, or cooperation from people with UBI who don’t need the profits.
That’s for basic goods. It’s good that other prices rise so that people are motivated to work.
Just curious, how can UBI be implemented in a way that doesn’t result in hyperinflation?
I don’t know - and we’re never going to find out, in the United States at least. I may support UBI but that doesn’t mean it’s not the biggest pipe dream in the history of pipe dreams.
if the government treats the UBI as a seperate “currency” that guarantees a certain amount of food water and shelter and in major cities the government is the primary provider of qualifying products it would only affect the non major cities, which would be small enough to not effect the greater market
41% of the population would object, together with 29% who don’t support assistance at all. If you want UBI in a democratic society you have to sell it differently.
But it doesn’t have to be the same group in the population. Probably a portion is the same but the larger picture is all those you help up again so they can help support the community/country/state, and the price is helping the group that otherwise make the community unsafe so they in large can … act decently to others and live a life without violence
helping the group that otherwise make the community unsafe
Why does such a group have to exist?
Why the downvotes. I cannot think of a group that is inherently unsafe. Who do you have in mind that you consider it an insult?
In a perfect world they wouldn’t. But its hard to ensure that everyone gets a traumatic free childhood, or that any natural insedent traumatise some people to the point where they cant/won’t be helped. I guess the downvotes is because your comment feels too unrealistic idealistic (otherwise I can’t see why)
non offending pedophiles are a classic example of a group that makes others unsafe. and removing them would be mass murder of innocent people.
If they can settle in their own town, there is no threat and they don’t need welfare. An example where initial assistance is needed but no continuous welfare.
If you have to continually support a part of the population then you have a systemic problem.
To a point, maybe, but populations are always going to have disabled persons or people with chronic illnesses that require continual assistance to live a dignified life. Be careful not to write those people off with sweeping generalizations like this.
You are right.
Do parapelegics require “temporary support”? There are some people who need continual support and they’re always going to exist in any society. Disabled people. And they aren’t a “systemic problem”.
there are governmental systems that would disagree on that last point.
And they would be immoral and evil if they suggest letting disabled people die off. Yes, I know about Libertarians and their selfish, egotistical, unempathetic views towards people less well off than they are. Anyone who believes “every man, woman, and child for themselves” is how a society should function is a piece of shit, sorry. And obviously you can lump Conservatives in with them on this issue too.
I could see a religions having a belief that being burdensome is a fate worse than death and a government then mandating that religion. Which admittedly goes against human rights, but is done in a few countries.
Having briefed a number of senior American bureaucrats and military officers I find it best to use:
- words of one syllable or less.
- no more than three primary colours.
- no numbers larger than 5.
